To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African-American Wacs Stationed Overseas During World War II (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780814755228)

The story of the historic 6888th, the first United States Women's Army Corps unit of African American women to serve overseas

While African American men and white women were invited, if belatedly, to serve their country abroad, African American women were excluded for overseas duty throughout most of WWII. However, under political pressure from legislators like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the NAACP, the Black press, and even President Roosevelt, the US War Department was forced to deploy African American women to the European theater in 1945.

African American women answered the call to serve from all over the country, from every socioeconomic stratum. Stationed in France and England at the end of World War II, the 6888th brought together women like Mary Daniel Williams, a cook in the unit who signed up for the Army to escape the slums of Cleveland and to improve her ninth-grade education, and Margaret Barnes Jones, the unit's public relations officer, who grew up in a comfortable household with a politically active mother who encouraged her to challenge the system.

Despite the social, political, and economic restrictions imposed upon these women in their own country, they were eager to serve, not only out of patriotism but out of a desire to uplift their race and dispel bigoted preconceptions about their abilities. Elaine Bennett, a First Sergeant, joined because "I wanted to prove to myself and maybe to the world that we would give what we had back to the United States as a confirmation that we were full- fledged citizens."

Filled with compelling personal stories based on extensive interviews, To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race is the first book to document the lives of these courageous pioneers. It reveals how their Army experience affected them for the rest of their lives and how they, in turn, transformed the US military forever.

Author: Brenda L. Moore
ISBN-10: 0814755224
ISBN-13: 9780814755228
Publisher: New York University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/01/1996
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 9.26h x 6.28w x 0.99d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/06/1995 pg. 77
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/1995 pg. 1474
Library Journal 12/01/1995 pg. 126
Booklist 01/01/1996 pg. 782